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Toronto G20 victim seeks apology in unique way: Porter

The song came to John Pruyn one morning, after yet another creepy dream.

He hasn’t slept well since that evening in June, three years ago, when police attacked him, disgraced him, and for the first time in his life, made him feel less than human. Worthless.

You slammed your knee into my head bone/Then you dragged me around like a traffic cone

If any one person is a symbol for the G20 police terror, it is Pruyn.

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He is a mild-mannered 60-year-old, who at the time of the G20 was a Christmas tree farmer and tax auditor for the Canada Revenue Agency. His favourite pastime is pruning trees.

He is also an amputee. He lost most of his left leg 20 years ago in a tractor accident on his farm in Pelham. Since then, he walks with a metal prosthetic and walking sticks for balance.

He came to Toronto with his wife and daughter for the big protest march down University Ave. He was one of those people who were sitting in the designated “free speech zone” at Queen’s Park, when the riot police attacked.

A number of police officers jumped on him while he was sitting down. Then, for some unfathomable reason, an officer grabbed his prosthetic leg and yanked it off. You can find the photo of Pruyn being handcuffed on the ground, surrounded by officers. One of them — no name tag visible — is holding his leg and walking sticks.

Pruyn obviously couldn’t walk to the police wagon. So the officers dragged him there by the elbows, he told both the Canadian Civil Liberties Association hearing and the Ontario ombudsman.

He lost his glasses in the process, too.

You beat me up and ripped off my leg . . . Then you took my walking sticks for your trophy case.

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Pruyn spent 27 hours in the makeshift jail on Eastern Ave., without his leg. Officers told him it was a potential weapon, he says. They gave it back to him upon his release, along with his driver’s licence. He never got his glasses or walking sticks, nor the $33 he had in his pocket that day, he says.

He was never charged with anything.

You treated me like a dead tree/Then you opened your cage and said I was free.

Pruyn took his case to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. It was settled quickly through mediation. But Pruyn never got to address his agressors face to face.

At the time, he thought that fast route would be the best for his mental health. He was wrong.

He went on antidepressants for a time. He suffered anxiety attacks. He couldn’t concentrate at his federal job, which he loved, so he took disability and then early retirement.

His wife Susan says he’s become withdrawn; a turtle in his shell.

When he talks about it today, his voice trembles.

“Every day, I think about it. Every night, I dream about it,” he says.

You humiliated me to please your boss/You wanted to save him from a face loss.

A second criminal trial started this week against police officers for their actions that infamous weekend. Pruyn isn’t hoping for criminal justice. Yes, he’d still like a public inquiry, which is looking less and less likely.

But at the core, what he wants is a simple apology.

A recognition by those police officers and their boss, Chief Bill Blair, and their ultimate boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, that they were wrong to treat him that way.

A recognition, finally, that he is a valuable human.

We live in era of metal men — men with the heads of eagles, with skins of blue leather, as Margaret Atwood wrote once.

Apologies are thought a sign of weakness, a cue for attack by blood-sniffing lawyers and ruthless opponents.

To date, Blair has said he is concerned about the “shortcomings of police response” during the G20 weekend. He’s said he takes responsibility for what happened then.

Mark Pugash, his spokesperson, told me the service has changed how disabled people are treated in custody because of Pruyn’s case. They are now allowed to keep their “assistive devices” (i.e. prosthetic limbs) “whenever possible.”

But Blair has never apologized and he doesn’t plan to now. When I asked Pugash, the answer was a terse “no.”

Who wouldn’t apologize to someone they had dismembered, even by accident?

Sorry is a powerful, healing word. It gives the speaker humility and the receiver some peace.

At the end of that poem, Atwood writes she prefers men with “real faces and hands.

We need a police force with courage and heart. We need to start healing as a city. Three years later, we need to start trusting our cops and believing they see us as precious human beings, not terrorists.

G20 apologize now, it’s been three years since you knocked us down.

We taped Pruyn singing his song, “G20 Apologize Now.” You can watch it online at thestar.com/insight .

Catherine Porter’s column usually appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. She can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca

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